‘Bush & Blair are war criminals’
Published Dec 18, 2005 7:41 PM
British playwright Harold Pinter used the platform of accepting his Nobel
prize for literature on Dec. 7 to call for putting George Bush and Tony Blair on
trial as war criminals. He was too ill to travel from his home in London to
Stockholm but recorded his 45-minute talk on video. Below are
excerpts.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? ... Look
at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three
years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained
forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the
Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by
what’s called the”’international community.”
This
criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be
“the leader of the free world.” Do we think about the inhabitants of
Guanta namo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up
occasionally—a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no
man’s land from which indeed they may never return.
At present many
are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties
in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck
up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has
the British Foreign Secre tary said about this? Nothing. What has the British
Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has
said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act.
You’re either with us or against us.
So Blair shuts up.
The
invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism,
demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The
invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies
and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended
to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East
masquerading—as a last resort—all other justifications having failed
to justify themselves—as liberation. A formidable assertion of military
force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of
innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted
uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the
Iraqi people and call it “bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle
East.”
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be
described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than
enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be
arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been
clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice.
Therefore, if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself
in the dock, Bush has warned that he will send in the Marines. But Tony Blair
has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let
the Court have his address if they’re interested. It is Number 10, Downing
Street, London.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair
place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by
American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are
of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even
recorded as being dead. “We don’t do body counts,” said the
American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a
photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair
kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. “A grateful child,” said
the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside
page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by
a missile. He was the only survivor. “When do I get my arms back?”
he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn’t holding him in
his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody
corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you’re making a
sincere speech on television.
The 2,000 American dead are an
embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are
unobtrusive, out of harm’s way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for
the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different
kinds of graves. ...
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the
United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their
government’s actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent
political force —yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can
see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.
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